Does Hillary Have Something to Be Sorry About?

Running for president means never having to say you're sorry. Or at least Hillary Clinton thinks so.

She steadfastly refuses to admit that her vote to authorize the Iraq war was a mistake. She refuses to say she was wrong.

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I will make a prediction: Before we get to the Iowa caucuses, Hillary will say she was wrong. She will admit she made an error. Because if she doesn't, she risks losing.

John Edwards, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden voted for the war also. But all of them now say that was a mistake.

"I was wrong," Edwards says. "It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake."

Here is what Hillary says: "Knowing what I know now, I would never have voted for it."

She says that President Bush "should not have been trusted with the authority we gave him."

Which is her way of saying, "I should have never given him the authority. It was a mistake."

But she won't say it. She will not admit human error on this issue. And it is affecting her campaign.

When she was in Iowa, she refused to make Iraq part of her stump speech, hoping, I guess, that nobody would ask her about it. And the first time a voter did ask, she didn't answer him. Later in the day, she gave versions of her "knowing what I know now" position.

You can't expect Hillary to turn back time. She cannot change history. She cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube.

But she can fess up instead of dodging.

Hillary Clinton can be open, charming, funny and warm on the stump.

When she talks about her Iraq vote, however, she sounds closed, guarded, calculating and defensive.

Her refusal to say a mistake was a mistake also feeds the impression that she is a divisive figure. Some voters will grow tired of all this and ask why she doesn't simply put the matter behind her by admitting the vote was wrong.

Think I'm exaggerating the magnitude of her problem? Here is an exchange that took place Sunday between Claire Helfman, a retired nurse who attended a house party in Nashua, N.H., and Clinton: "I've heard your explanation for your vote: 'I didn't think I was voting for the war, I was voting for inspections.' It doesn't fly. It just doesn't fly," Helfman said.

Then, according to the Associated Press, "The New York senator repeated her long-standing mantra -- 'If we knew then what we know now, I would never have voted to give this president the authority.' And she again batted down calls for her to describe her vote as a mistake."

(And when the Associated Press calls your position "a long-standing mantra," it is a sign of how serious things have gotten.)

"I'm sorry, what I say is what I believe," Hillary said to Helfman. "I understand that some people disagree or think it's not adequate, but it's what I believe."

Such sincerity can be gutsy and appealing. But to some it does not sound like sincerity, it sounds like arrogance. The same kind President Bush displayed when in April 2004 he was asked at a news conference to name a single mistake he had made and he could not think of one.

The Democratic National Committee recently held its winter meeting in Washington, and all the 2008 candidates spoke over two days. Anyone who showed up for both days (and very few reporters did) learned that virtually any of the second-tier candidates could swiftly move up to the first tier.

"Iraq is a symptom," Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico said. "The disease is arrogance."

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack said, "Those who voted for the war, those who voted to continue to support the war, those who voted to continue funding the war, can surely vote to stop the war."

Neither one ever had to vote on the Iraq war. Nor did Barack Obama.

That could give them an advantage in the Democratic Iowa caucuses, which are dominated by liberal activists, and in the New Hampshire primary, where voters have a history of sending a message with their votes.

"She has a very nuanced explanation, and it's a pretty good explanation. But many people want to hear her clearly say that her vote was a mistake," Paul LeBlanc, a Clinton supporter and president of Southern New Hampshire University, told a reporter Sunday.

"I don't think this issue is going to subside anytime soon," Dean Spiliotes, director of research at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, said. "There is a lot of pressure on her now to explain her vote and almost do a little penance for it."

I know Hillary's campaign hopes that the press will tire of writing about this and the public will tire of asking about it and it will all go away.

But I doubt that will happen. Front-runners don't get many breaks, and Hillary is the front-runner. For now.

David Nagle, former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said recently: "Anybody who raises a real banner against (the war) is going to do well. Anybody who tries to toe-step around it is going to have a real problem."

I am aware of the political calculation Hillary is making. She is trying to play it safe by not saying she is sorry. She doesn't want to go too far to the left in the primaries, so she can get back toward the center in the general election.

But before she can win the general election, she has to win the Democratic nomination.